Tropical Forests Forever? − Confronting the Amazon’s fate at COP30

The Amazon: A Forest Under Siege

The Amazon rainforest forms one of the largest ecosystem carbon pools on Earth and plays an important role in stabilising our climate by absorbing a significant share of the annual anthropogenic carbon emissions and cooling the land surface. Amazonian trees maintain transpiration-precipitation cycles that form atmospheric rivers, transporting water across and beyond the region, providing crucial water supplies to agricultural regions. A recent study estimated that each square metre of Amazonian forest contributes ~300 litres each year to regional rainfall.  Yet these globally important ecosystem services — long taken for granted — are now at profound risk. The Amazon is facing dual and compounding pressures from increasing climate extremes, leading to elevated tree mortality, and high levels of deforestation for agricultural land-use. Together, these pressures are understood to be increasing the risk of large-scale ecological change, raising concern that parts of the system could approach critical thresholds beyond which recovery may be difficult, with adverse consequences for the Earth’s climate stability and humanity.

In 2023 and 2024, unprecedented drought and fire tore across the basin, fuelled by El Niño and long-term warming. At the same time, deforestation — though reduced in recent years — remains dangerously high. Scientists warn that continued forest loss and degradation could increase the likelihood of transitions towards more open, drier vegetation states in parts of the Amazon. Some areas in the southeast seem to have already begun this transition, where there are indications of changing forest structure and function. While deforestation is a complex issue, scientific evidence, presented at COP30 clearly showed that one driver towers above the rest: livestock expansion for meat and dairy production, especially from cattle ranching.

Land, Livestock, and the Math We Cannot Escape

How harmful to the environment can livestock really be? Let us have a look at the numbers. Globally, our food production system accounts for roughly one fourth of all emissions — and the majority of those agricultural emissions, 16.5% of the global total, come from the livestock sector. To put this into perspective: producing animal products releases more carbon emissions to the atmosphere than the entire transport sector, that is all cars, trucks, busses, boats, trains and planes combined. Yet animal products provide us only with a fraction of the world’s calories, with only 17% of the calories being produced on 80% of the agricultural land. The inefficiency is staggering: humans lose about 97% of the calories fed to cattle when those calories return to us as beef. In other words, we have the choice to either eat 100 calories of plants ourselves, or feed those 100 calories to animals and get only a fraction, ~3% to 13% at best, of those calories from the meat we eat. To use a simple metaphor: eating meat is like buying a loaf of bread, eating one slice, and throwing the rest into the bin every time. A type of food waste we rarely talk about. This ecological principle that governs natural food webs, that energy is inevitably ‘lost’ as heat and other physiological costs at each step up the food chain, applies just as much to our agricultural systems. As we keep living beyond the planetary boundaries, this energy inefficiency translates directly into land pressure. To produce the same number of calories, diets high in beef and dairy require vastly more land than plant-rich diets. And land is exactly what the Amazon cannot spare.

Demand will determine the ‘Forever’ of Tropical Forests

One of COP30’s major announcements was the launch of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), a new finance mechanism aimed at protecting tropical forests. While the initiative has successfully secured high-level political backing (including from countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Germany, and Norway), its financial and operational milestones are currently trailing original expectations. Whether it becomes transformative remains to be seen, but it complements existing tools such as carbon credits and REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) policies. Voluntary and financial frameworks matter. Take the Soy Moratorium for example, a multi-stakeholder commitment to avoid buying soy grown on Amazon land deforested after July 2008, which drastically reduced soy-driven deforestation. But its future is currently at risk and will remain uncertain as population increases and demand for meat and dairy continues to grow.

Financial solutions are essential, yet they cannot alone counteract the physical reality of land pressure created by global demand for livestock products. However, reducing this pressure by transforming our food system towards more plant-based diets could free vast areas for reforestation or for agroforestry systems that produce nutritious crops aligned with the planetary health diet within planetary boundaries, with special emphasis on producing nuts, legumes, grains, fruits, and vegetables, as recommended and published by the EAT-Lancet commission. These plant-based agroforestry systems often absorb more greenhouse gases than they emit, turning degraded pastures into carbon sinks while improving rural livelihoods.

Research shows that cutting out beef, dairy, and mutton already delivers the greatest land-use reductions, without requiring full veganism. Globally, removing these products from diets would free up about three-quarters of all agricultural land currently used — an area the size of North America and Brazil combined. Imagine the number of ecosystems we could restore! Such a bold transformation would dramatically reduce agricultural emissions and enable large-scale carbon drawdown through nature-based climate solutions.

Global Mutirão

Just as phasing out fossil fuels is essential, rapid reductions in agricultural emissions are crucial if we are to halt deforestation and stay well below 2°C of warming. Demand will determine the Amazon’s future — and dietary transformation is the most powerful lever we have. We need mutirão, a term originally from the Tupi-Guarani in Brazil and adopted by the COP30 presidency, meaning collective effort. Global mutirão captures that same spirit on a planetary scale, a shared commitment to reshape our food systems to fit within the planetary boundaries and safeguard the world’s forests.

While the energy transition accelerates, we cannot reach net zero without addressing land. For the Amazon — and for ecosystems worldwide — bold decisions are needed. The most immediate and accessible climate action lies on our plates. If we truly want tropical forests to be “forever,” we must build a food system that allows them to remain standing.